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Saturday, 27 February 2010

Singstar Hottest Hits Game Review

Singstar is a competitive karaoke game for the Playstation 2, which has now released more than twenty games, spanning a range of music genres and time periods, from pop to the 80s. More recently, they have also released compilation discs for ABBA, Queen and Take That.

Singstar Hottest Hits is released only in Australia, although it is PAL region coded, which means it is playable on European PAL PS2 systems!

~~~BOX DESIGN~~~The box art for this game is really attractive and has an orange overall colour to it which is bright and appealing, although perhaps slightly intense? The art is very consistent with previous games, and keeps to the series very well. However, it is NOT the cover or the game art that you should be looking at! Just look at the track list~ it's HOT.

~~~GAME PLAY~~~The game play is immensely straightforward. It is basically karaoke but the game makes it competitive by scoring you on a number of criteria, such as pitch and rhythm. Whilst singing, coloured bars on screen guide you as to how high and how long to sing a note to, so even beginners can have great fun trying to sing along to the hits!

In addition to single player mode, there is battle mode (for two players), pass the mic (for up to 8 players), duet (where two people sing together not against each other) and free play (just karaoke and no scoring!). I personally love Battle Mode the most as it gives the game an edge and induces competition and laughter.

Whilst you sing, the official music video for the song is played in the background, but if you have an Eye-Toy, you can plug it in and watch yourself sing (and dance?) to the song!

~~~TRACKLIST~~~ This is the track list to the Hottest Hits Singstar game which contains 30 tracks:

I am simply STUNNED. The list has some REAL gems, and proper hits that are international such as Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars, Ting Tings's That's Not My Name, Mika's Grace Kelly, Avril Lavigne's When You're Gone, Sam Sparro's Black and Gold... The list goes ON.

I love pretty much all the songs on there, and even ones I had not heard of previously, I grew to like. There are less than 5 songs I don't really like on there, but they can easily be skipped and aren't immensely bad.

I love Delta Goodrem but that song just isn't the best one to put on the disc, there are loads from her new album "Delta" that would fare better in my opinion, especially I can't Break it to my heart, In this life or believe again. Nonetheless, at least they have embraced their very own pop goddess!

The songs which create the most fun and embarrassment has to be Ting Tings's That's not my name which consists of mainly rap scoring, Mika's Grace Kelly which is just immensely difficult to sing correctly and Fergie's Clumsy; I was too distracted by the funny music video to pay attention to the lyrics! All in all, great fun!

With such an amazing track list, I only wonder why it wasn't released here in Europe!!!

~~~PRICE~~~I had to do some online searching, with ebay and amazon pushing the prices right up to £30, whilst I found this online retailer called Chaos, which sold it for around £17, including postage and packaging. Despite its website saying that it won't be dispatched until March 10 when I ordered about two weeks ago, it was dispatched the next working day, and took just one week to arrive, even though the site stated 2-4 weeks.

I am ultimately very pleased, it is the cheapest on the web right now and it is really worth the money to invest in this game, as it simply is AMAZING!

~~~OVERALL~~~I didn't think anything could top Singstar Pop World Edition, but it looks like it has! Singstar Hottest Hits, only released in Australia, has a jaw droppingly good track list that leaves you loving the game and singing it over and over and over again! A majority of the songs I love on here with minimal ones I dislike or hate.

Not everyone will like these, as everyone has different music tastes, so make sure you Youtube the songs or something before purchasing to find the Singstar game that suits you!!!

However, I LOVE THIS GAME!!! And I can safely say this is the BEST Singstar disc to be released, so grab yourself a copy!